Legacy
by Maybe the Moon
Summary: Pawprints left on an old and weary heart. Poem by Yeats.


The boy is in the library again, at the last row of tables over by the window. He is alone and reading intently when the other boy arrives in a flurry of red and gold and long black hair.

"Here you are," says Sirius, leaning against the table. With him comes the scent of mud and night-time air. "Been looking everywhere for you, Moony."

Remus looks up from the text. "And you've brought half the pitch with you," he says, calm as you please, as if Gryffindor-coloured cyclones regularly interrupted his studying. "Madame Pince is going to hang your head on the wall for tracking in mud, you know."

Sirius sits down, dismissing Remus's warning with a wave of a filthy hand. "I won't be here long enough for her to catch me." He leans on his elbows across the table, peering at the book under Remus's slender, capable hands. "You're reading," he states the obvious as if it isn't to anyone but himself, "instead of watching practise."

"Very astute." Remus returns his attention to the page and realises he's already finished it. He turns to the next and is halfway through the first passage when the book is suddenly gone and he's left staring at the surface of the table. With a sigh he looks up again at Sirius, who has stolen the book, turned it toward himself and is now frowning at the words the way that he does in History of Magic, when he's forced to read about Goblin uprisings and other unnecessary things.

"This is Muggle," he says, after a moment. "Muggle poems."

Remus nods, reaches for the book. "It is, yeah."

"But you're not taking Muggle Studies."

"Don't have to take the class," says Remus, "to like reading the stuff they write."

He takes back the book but not for long. Sirius stands up and comes around to his side, pulls out a chair and sits beside him, close enough to read over Remus's shoulder. His presence is not warm but cool; he smells like recent flight and Remus thinks that if Sirius would just lean over a bit more he would be able to smell the wind still caught in the darkness of Sirius's hair - which is just so long these days that it's becoming ridiculous.

"So what's so good about it?" asks Sirius, and Remus has to stop thinking about night-flying and concentrate on the voice of the boy in his ear. He marvels at having to explain something so simple as words and rhythm to a boy as brilliant as Sirius, who is more intelligent than he lets on sometimes. Being James Potter's best friend is just much easier.

Remus lifts the book, holding it up so that Sirius can see. The page he'd been reading is now smudged with dirty fingerprints from Quidditch hands and inwardly he winces - Pince will wring his neck when she sees and he doesn't have the gold to replace such an old book. "It's a feeling," he says. "You don't necessarily have to understand what he's writing about, but how the words make you feel. It's often a lot simpler than you think it is, to read a poem."

A sniffing noise. "James says poetry's sort of - poncey," Sirius says apologetically, because at least once a week someone in their group says the same of Remus, though it's affectionate enough. "Says it's no point in knowing any of it, because it's not useful."

Remus laughs. "And that is why James will never get anywhere with Lily," he says, tapping the page with his finger. "A lot of these were written by men who were trying to get into the knickers of their women - or other men," he adds quickly, and Sirius's eyebrows vanish into his hairline. "It's just a nice way to express yourself to someone you care about, to read a poem to them. Especially if you can't get the words right by yourself."

Sirius nods, and in his expression Remus watches him process this, turning it over and over in his whirlwind of a mind, and then he's leaning over and looking at the words on the page and reading them aloud in a slow and steady voice. A voice that was meant for reading, Remus thinks fondly.

When Sirius is finished and looking at him, he is smiling.

And then suddenly, in s swift motion that rivals anything Remus has ever seen on a Quidditch pitch, Sirius kisses him. It's not smooth by any means because Remus isn't expecting it and Sirius doesn't know what he's doing, but it is still very much a kiss.

It's over before Remus even realises it is and Sirius has pulled away, looking at him from beyond the veil of his hair, laughing softly.

"I'll leave the words to you," he says, and then he is gone.

--

The man is in the library, at the last row of tables by the window. He is older now, the frail and bent shadow of a boy from decades before, and like the book in his hand he is well-read and very tired. He sits quietly, alone with his book, reading the text of a poem, forgotten until now. His fingers shake with age and the aftershocks of a grief untouched by the years that have passed since that day in front of an archway and its tattered veil.

_When you are old and grey and full of sleep_

_And nodding by the fire take down this book_

_And slowly read and dream of the soft look _

_Your eyes had once_

_and of their shadows deep_

_How many loved your moments of glad grace_

_And loved your beauty with love false or true_

_But one man loved the pilgrim Soul in you_

_And loved the sorrows of your changing face_

_And bending down beside the glowing bars, _

_Murmur, a little sadly, how _

_Love fled And paced upon the mountains overhead _

_And hid his face amid a crowd of stars._

The man's eyes close as he remembers bright eyes and Quidditch robes, and the crooked grin of a big, black dog. After a moment they open again, and he leaves the book open when he goes, the pages fluttering in his wake and blessed by the moonlight through the window, open to a page still marked by dirty fingers and laughter, a pawprint on an old and weary heart.


End file.
